LONDON (Reuters) – London braced on Sunday for more violence after some of the worst riots seen in the British capital for years which politicians and police blamed on criminal thugs but residents attributed to local tensions and anger over hardship.

“There is Twitter conversations that people are being asked to meet again down in Tottenham so we are all concerned but clearly we will be much better prepared this evening,” Richard Barnes, London’s Deputy Mayor, told BBC TV.

Police Commander Adrian Hanstock told Reuters there was “a lot of ill-informed and inaccurate speculation on social media sites” that could inflame the situation.

“Should we receive any indication that there will be any further violence or offending, there is a robust policing plan in place and we will respond appropriately with the resources available to us,” he said.

BOMBARDED WITH MISSILES, BOTTLES

Police said 26 officers were injured as rioters bombarded them with missiles and bottles, looted buildings including banks, shops and council offices, and torched three patrol cars near Tottenham police station in north London.

The riots erupted after a street protest over the fatal shooting of a man by armed officers this week turned violent.

Residents said they were forced to flee their homes to escape the trouble as mounted police and riot officers on foot charged the crowd to push rioters back.

As day broke, the Metropolitan Police, which will handle next year’s London Olympic Games in what is expected to be Britain’s biggest peacetime operation, faced questions about how the trouble had been allowed to escalate.

The disturbance was only finally brought under control on Sunday after hours of sporadic clashes. Buildings were still smouldering, bricks littered the roads and burglar alarms continued to ring out.

At a nearby retail park, electrical stores and mobile phone shops had been ransacked, with boxes for large plasma televisions discarded outside, along with CDs and glass from smashed windows.

“They have taken almost everything,” said Saad Kamal, 27, branch manager of retailer JD Sports. “Whatever is left is damaged.”

APPEAL FOR CALM

Local member of parliament David Lammy said they did not know if everyone had escaped flats above shops that were gutted by fire. “A community that was already hurting has now had the heart ripped out of it,” he told reporters.

Police and community leaders said the community had been horrified by what happened and appealed for calm amid fears that further rioting could break out or spread to other areas.

The trouble broke out on Saturday night following a peaceful demonstration over the shooting of Mark Duggan, 29, who was killed after an exchange of gunfire with police on Thursday. Duggan’s death is now being investigated by the independent police watchdog.

The riots also come amid deepening gloom in Britain, with the economy struggling to grow amid deep public spending cuts and tax rises brought into help eliminate a budget deficit which peaked at more than 10 percent of GDP.

“Tottenham is a deprived area. Unemployment is very, very high … they are frustrated,” said Uzodinma Wigwe, 49, who was made redundant from his job as a cleaner recently.

“We know we have been victimised by this government, we know we are being neglected by the government,” said another middle-aged man who declined to give his name. “How can you make one million youths unemployed and expect us to sit down?”

Tottenham has a large number of ethnic minorities and includes areas with the highest unemployment rates in London. It also has a history of racial tension with local young people, especially blacks, resenting police behavior including the use of stop and search powers.

NOTORIOUS RACE RIOT IN 1985

The disorder was close to where one of Britain’s most notorious race riots occurred in 1985, when police officer Keith Blakelock was hacked to death on the deprived Broadwater Farm housing estate during widespread disturbances.

Locals said there had been growing anger recently about police behavior.

“I’ve lived in Broadwater Farm for 20 odd years and from day one, police always pre-judge Turks and black people,” said a 23-year-old community worker of Turkish origin who would not give his name.

Fingers were also pointed at the police for failing to anticipate the trouble, although Commander Hanstock said there had been no hint of what was coming. He said they expected to add to the 42 people already arrested.

The London force has been heavily criticised for its handling of recent large protests against austerity measures, while its chief and the top counter-terrorism officer have quit over the handling of the News Corp phone-hacking scandal.

“I’m concerned that what was peaceful protest … turned into this and it seemed to go on for many hours before we saw the kind of policing that I think is appropriate,” Lammy said.

Politicians said criminals and thugs, rather than those with genuine grievances, had taken advantage of the situation.

“The rioting in Tottenham last night was utterly unacceptable,” a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said. “There is no justification for the aggression the police and the public faced, or for the damage to property.”

The capital also saw riots at the end of last year when protests against government plans to raise tuition fees for university students in the center of London turned violent with police and government buildings attacked.

During the most serious disturbances last December, rioters targeted the limousine belonging to heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, kicking its doors, cracking a window and reportedly jabbing Camilla with a stick.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

LONDON (AP) — The violent riot that tore through a deprived north London neighborhood has cast a pall over Britain’s capital, spreading malaise through a city preparing to host the Olympic Games.

26 police officers were injured, with eight of them being briefly hospitalized, after a peaceful protest against the shooting death of a young man degenerated into a Saturday night rampage, with rioters torching a double-decker bus, destroying patrol cars and trashing a shopping mall.

Looters descended on the Tottenham area around midnight, setting buildings alight, and piling stolen goods into cars and shopping carts. Sirens could be heard across the capital as authorities rushed reinforcements to the scene. Police reported 42 arrests.

“This is just a glimpse into the abyss,” former Metropolitan Police Commander John O’Connor told Sky News television Sunday. “Someone’s pulled the clock back and you can look and see what’s beneath the surface. And what with the Olympic Games coming up, this doesn’t bode very well for London.”

As residents of Tottenham and nearby Wood Green picked through the wreckage Sunday, O’Connor said the disturbance had echoes of Tottenham’s 1985 Broadwater Farm riot, a deadly disturbance that led to the savage stabbing of a police officer and the wounding of nearly 60 others — brutally underscoring tensions between London’s police and the capital’s black community.

That riot was among one of the most violent in the country’s history. It too was sparked by the death of a local resident after an encounter with the police.

Saturday’s protest set off peacefully, but got ugly as between 300 and 500 people gathered around Tottenham’s police station.

Some protesters filled bottles with gasoline to throw at police lines, others confronted officers with makeshift weapons — including baseball bats and bars — and attempted to storm the station.

Within hours, police in riot gear and on horseback were clashing with hundreds of rioters, fires were raging out of control, and looters combed the area. One video posted to the Guardian newspaper‘s website showed looting being carried out at daybreak several hours later, with people even lining up to steal from one store.

The devastated area smoldered Sunday — some streets littered with bricks and lined with overturned scorched trash cans. Two police helicopters hovered over the burnt-out buildings as residents inspected the damage and firefighters doused the last of the flames. Acrid smoke hung over the area.

Journalist and Tottenham resident Rizwana Hamid, who covered the 1985 riots, said Saturday night’s violence was reminiscent of the earlier eruption in Tottenham, an ethnically mixed area which is home to one of London’s largest black communities.

“The climate has changed, but very little of the issues have gone away,” she told the BBC. She cited desperation, poverty and what she said was a lack of communication from police about the circumstances under which the man — 29-year-old Mark Duggan — was gunned down.

Police gave no details on the circumstances of the shooting, citing the ongoing investigation.

British media said that an officer involved in the shooting had a bullet lodged in his radio, suggesting a gunfight, but other details were scarce. Britain’s police watchdog is investigating.

The Metropolitan Police, colloquially known as Scotland Yard, has struggled for years to cope with a 1999 inquiry into the death of a black British teenager that concluded that the force was “institutionally racist.” In 2003, the Black Police Association even went as far as to call on ethnic minorities not to join Scotland Yard, saying discrimination was rife.

Although the force has made strides in its relationships with black communities, tensions linger.

Local lawmaker David Lammy, speaking to residents from behind police tape, angrily denied that the Saturday night riot hinted at a return to the previous unrest.

“We don’t want 25 years of community and trust destroyed because of mindless nonsense,” Lammy said.

He was heckled by a man who yelled: “When are we going get justice? We need justice, man! Let’s talk about justice!”

Many other residents interviewed expressed disbelief at the riot, which the police seemed to acknowledge had caught them by surprise.

“I’m completely and utterly disgusted by what the community has managed to do here,” said Nadine Knight, 24, who works at a planning and architecture firm.

Christian Macani, a 22-year-old who works in environmental sciences, spoke for many when he asked: “What does this achieve?”